The One About My First Guest
She's too cute for jail
TL;DR
As a way to still ship this newsletter, but also have a little less work involved in coming up with an opening sequence, I have decided to do a series of interviews called “Behind The Hustle” where I interview some community members and ask them to spill the tea about their business. Sometimes real-life examples are the best way to learn and be inspired.
So the only preaching I’m doing today is to tell you to go watch the interview and learn from another real person whose life completely changed because she took the brave step into bookkeeping entrepreneurship.
Lynsi Ingram was my first victim, er, I mean guest.
Check out one of the comments right on YouTube:
This is by far one of my favorite interviews!!!! She’s amazing and I love how transparent she was! These conversations are so needed and are so helpful. Thanks, Kate!
Side note: you know, if you comment on my YouTube videos it helps me out. And it is free to do. So comment, comment, comment, please!
Y’all, she even shares her revenue numbers, which I think is one of the most important questions I can ask and which I have told every scheduled guest that I expect them to answer.
The direct link to the video will be a little bit farther down in this newsletter in the Help You Hustle Section. I can’t put the link here yet, because I want the first link you see to be the one to sign up for the Xero Road Shows.
I asked the nerdy version of ChatGPT what percentage of the US population lives within 200 miles of the 6 locations for the Xero Road Shows. It answered that ~33% of the population lives within that manageable radius of a Xero Road Show. That means there is a 1 in 3 chance of YOU being within a reasonable drive! Shoot, splurge on a hotel for one night and take your main squeeze or your best friend and make it a fun getaway, too. It’s a write off!
Bang the graphic and sign up. Even if you don’t use Xero (yet).
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Visit www.RightTool.app to start with the FREE edition, and when ready upgrade to the PRO version, use coupon HUSTLE30 to get 30% off the PRO edition for the first year.
💰 Two different sales for Coupon code for 10% off the QBO Hands-On-Training Complete Class* is QBOHOT2025.
You can get it for 25% through July 6.
💰 The Bookkeeping Fast Track from Akadian Accounting Education is on sale for $621 off with code July1776.
💰 Bookkeeper Launch is giving free upgrades to the Premier version for the price of the Pro version. You can compare the plans here. It includes both the full pay and 12-month pay options.
💰 A new Theater of Public Speaking cohort starts this August. I am passing along what would be my affiliate commission to you so you get a 10% discount. I took this course. It is a definitely a “door opening” course for our industry, in addition to being outstanding training in speaking and presenting yourself confidently.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
Be There or Be Square
Items with a “+” are hosted by me. All these events can be viewed and registered for in the DESCRIPTIONS of each event on the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Calendar.
📅+July 14 - State of the Virtual Bookkeeping & Accounting Industry: 2025 Survey Results. Serena Shoup, The Ambitious Bookkeeper, and I will discuss the results of her survey. If you want all the results of this survey, go here*. RSVP in the FB group to get the link to watch.
📅 July 15 - Running Reports in QuickBooks Online - After spending hours meticulously updating your business records, it’s time to analyze your business! Let QuickBooks unlock the insights from your carefully maintained records, turning your efforts into actionable intelligence for business growth and strategy. Register HERE*.
📅 July 17 - August 21 - Xero US Roadshows. Get ready for an action-packed day at the Xero Roadshow! Experience hands-on product demos, expert-led sessions on advisory services, AI, and app stacks, plus valuable networking opportunities with Xero partners and industry leaders. There are going all over the US - see which one is closest to you HERE and GO!
📅 July 21 - Start date for the “college style” QuickBooks Online Complete Hands On Training* with Alicia Katz Pollock.
📅 +July 24 - Behind The Hustle: Amber Reusch - the second installment of the Behind The Hustle series. Learn from REAL people who built their bookkeeping business. Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss it!
Featured Posts
🌶️ Beth Anne asked how you stay focused when you deal with interruptions and task switching. 88 comments and counting. Apparently there is a real need to solve this problem.
🌶️ Callum Y. asked about how to take vacation. I’m taking notes!
Help You Hustle
💪 Be sure to catch the first installment of a brand new series called Behind The Hustle where I interview, Lynsi Ingram, a former teacher turned bookkeeping entrepreneur.
Some highlights:
Her firm is 4 years old. She shared the revenue for each year, even detailing how much she charges different clients.
She explains how long she kept it as a part-time operation while continuing to work as a teacher.
When discussing a difficult business owner, she said the phrase “I'm too cute to go to jail” which I have decided to add to my own lexicon.
We also forced her to commit out loud and On Air to when she is going to sit for her final Enrolled Agent exam. Be careful coming on my show or I might just force you to do hard things. :-)
💪 Have you tried several different new client onboarding workflows and none of them jived with you? Are you feeling like “why can everyone else do this and I cannot!”. Well, the Ambitious Bookkeeper has created a free private podcast of 7 episodes called Dubsado Decoded* about using a CRM software called Dubsado to manage the lead -> proposal -> engagement letter -> and onboarding process. Maybe that tool could be a better fit for you.
💪 Hope Brown told me about a mentoring program by Goldman Sachs called 10,000 Small Businesses.
They run free 8 week business coaching programs for entrepreneurs. Answer 4 questions to see if you qualify. If you are reading this, you probably do!
It is FREE, y’all! There are many in-person cohorts all over the country (in real life is best if you can swing it!). But there is even a national cohort that gets together in person at the end of the program.
Hope did the Baltimore cohort in person and couldn’t speak more highly of it!
For Fun
😹 Do you love accounting? Do you love trivia? Well, catch this edition of “Who Wants To Be An Accounting Millionaire”. You will recognize the guest. ;-)
I asked the host to donate all of my winnings to The Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. Will YOU please donate to this special (tax deductible) cause that started as a dream of mine to help hard working bookkeepers get to their very first accounting industry conference? We are sending SIXTEEN people to their very first conference this year. All expenses paid. It is expensive to do that! We need moolah.
P.S. I think you can apply to be a guest on that gameshow down in the description of that video.
My Family Circus (43F, 40M, 13M, 12F, 11M)
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🎪 One of the most expensive things I do
Hopefully all the hardcore business nerds reading this had at least one economics class where they learned about the concept of opportunity cost. The cost of something isn’t just the cash outlay. It is also the value of that next best thing that you could be doing.
But every two weeks, I do something that has an enormous opportunity cost when you simply compare it to what I could be earning.
I cut my husband’s hair.
On paper, it makes no mathematical sense that I do this.
So why do I continue to do this for over 14 years, you ask? Oh, let me tell you. I have so many reasons.
If money is tight, you can definitely save cash. When I started doing this about 3 years into our marriage, saving money was definitely the motivation. I was determined to be the best “home economist” I could be when I was not earning an income.
If you have children, you might be able to cut their hair, too. More cash savings! I do cut one of my boy’s hair between trips to Great Clips.
I love absolutely everything about my children seeing me do this for their father. I want them to see us doing things with our own two hands to save money for our family. They don’t need to know that saving money is no longer the primary motivation. They are learning the value of being self-sufficient.
We are in a pretty whirlwind phase of life right now, and this simple activity forces my husband and me to find 30 minutes every two weeks to be face to face. This was not really a motivation early on, but this slow time together is now a huge blessing to managing our marriage and home.
And the flirting! Unfortunately, I can't say we flirt every time I cut his hair, but I’d say we do more often than not. It is really intimate to cut someone’s hair. Highly recommend if it's been more “roommates” than “romance” in your house lately.
So, perhaps you are convinced of the merits. How can you get started, you ask?
You got to have chutzpah. I’ve got that in spades. I just sort of live my life with the assumption that there's almost nothing that I cannot do. If you need chutzpah, go ask ChatGPT for some ideas on how to get some. It actually had some really good ideas when I asked it, but it is too long to share here.
You need a partner who is encouraging and forgiving and not a diva. I know how to do one haircut. That's the only option on the menu. And he knew there was some risk in me doing this, but amazingly, I haven’t really messed up yet. But if I had messed up, he would have not been too hard on me. He would have gone to a professional to fix it.
You need to accompany them to the barber/salon and ask for the stylist to narrate what he/she is doing. Take notes. I did this three times before I tried it myself.
And of course, you’ll need to buy some sort of hair cutting supplies. I buy an inexpensive clipper kit* and a pair of decent hair scissors* from Amazon every 2-3 years.
Here is to making life choices that aren’t always about the dollars and cents.
Kate Builds In Public
I’ve been OOO for 2 full weeks! No lie! I sent you the last newsletter when I was headed on Orlando FL for Scaling New Heights and had a 2-week OOO message set. This newsletter was written from different family member’s houses down in south Texas. So not a lot to report about my own business, but I’ll share a couple of things.
🎢 I did bust my butt to publish a piece of “pillar content” which was a video tutorial about a downloadable “Weekly FreshBooks Checklist”. The next step is to truly make it a “top of funnel” where I have an email series that drips out to the people that download it, hopefully providing them value and also converting them to paying clients (ideally to my FreshBooks Office Hours group for DIYers). That is the plan anyway.
🎢 I crushed my presentation at Scaling New Heights. I’m so thrilled with the feedback that I received. It was all about how to offer a “one-to-many” service inside a bookkeeping/accounting/tax firm. I believe every last one of you reading this newsletter can come up with an idea about how to do 1 piece of work, but get 2 clients to pay you for it. If you can do that, then you can get 3. And then 4. And then 15 and then 30. Sky’s the limit on a one-to-many service. If you have a venue where I can continue to share this information about how firms can offer membership services inside their firms, please let me know. I’d love to teach more accounting pros about this concept.
🎢 I bought not 1, but 2 tickets to Scaling New Heights for next year. I’m going to take my husband. It will be exactly 1 year before he retires from the military. We are going to use this conference as a trial run for him to find out if he could see himself working for my firm after he hangs up his flight suit. He’ll meet vendors. He’ll get a huge variety of breakout sessions. If he hates it, well, at least we’ll have saved ourselves a lot of pain having him do something that is not a good fit.
From The Vault
⚡Last newsletter I shared the exact details about how much I got paid by Relay’s referral program this year. Watch this video to learn about the Relay Partner Program. Also, subscribe to this publication so you always get these juicy details.
Letters To The Editor
✉️ I hope lots folks feel they way she does. See full list of micro-conferences here.
Thank you for listing out those micro-conferences, Kate! That was a big help for me. I am definitely not missing out on WAVE 2026. Kayla M.
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Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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I am down right rabid about transparency and full disclosure. If a link, including Amazon Links, has a * beside it, it means it is either an affiliate link where I might receive compensation if you make a purchase, at no additional charge to you. Or it could be a tracking link that another business provided me to see how many readers click on that link.
I live in Canada and I am wondering how do I go about obtaining clients.